ELE brings leaders together across companies and industries to work through the messy stuff: decisions, risk, handoffs, execution drag, and what it takes to move from idea to action.

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Figure out if ELE is for you. Straight answers on what ELE is, who it’s built for, and how contributing members actually work together. Still have a question? Contact us.

Lake Forest Center for Leadership

The journey is never linear — we Bloom, we Burn, and we Breakthrough. In this keynote, Matt Sernaker will share the unique duality of his career and how his work in hospitality and entertainment has enabled him to craft impactful experiences for both audiences and employees.

From Balance to Breakthrough

Engagement &amp; Culture

Leadership

talent development

employee experience

well-being

CHIE2025

emotional intelligence

matt.sernaker

organizational culture

resilience

work-life balance

Personal Development

Leadership Journey

Leadership Insights

engagement strategy

breakthrough leadership

practical wisdom

culture design

Quad/Graphics

ELE Group, LLC

In this session, you will walk away with practical ways to use skills data in moments that matter in the employee journey. We will explore how skills data can be used to identify and prioritize these critical moments in an employee's journey. We will discuss use cases for skills data, such as:
<ul>
 	<li>Onboarding: How can skills data be used to personalize the onboarding process and ensure new employees have the necessary tools and resources to succeed in their new role?</li>
 	<li>Recognition and Feedback: How can skills data be used to provide personalized recognition and feedback to employees based on their strengths and improvement areas?</li>
 	<li>Career Development: How can skills data be used to identify career development and training opportunities that align with an employee's interests and skills?</li>
 	<li>Work-Life Balance: How can skills data be used to help managers understand their team's workload and identify opportunities for flexible schedules or time off?</li>
 	<li>Team Building: How can skills data be used to build strong teams by identifying complementary skill sets and facilitating cross-functional collaboration?</li>
</ul>
Through this roundtable discussion, we will explore these use cases and share best practices for leveraging skills data to create a culture of engagement that supports employees at every stage of their journey.

Moments that Matter Skills Data

engagement &amp; culture

Analytics

career development

serena.huang

darren.boyce

insights-wise-2023

skills data

employee journey

moments that matter

cross-functional collaboration

Do you wish you could stop the mayhem of work and life and just take a minute? Do you sense you could contribute more if there were a little more room in the day? Does busyness deprive you and your burnt-out team of the oxygen your talents need to catch fire?

Many have felt that way, yet taking a pause has seemed impossible—until now.

In A Minute to Think, Juliet Funt, a globally recognized warrior in the battle against busyness, provides a powerful guide that will give you the permission, framework, and specific direction you need to do the following:
<ul class="a-unordered-list a-vertical">
 	<li>Regain control of your overloaded, caffeinated, inbox-worshiping workday</li>
 	<li>Liberate yourself and your teams from burnout and busywork</li>
 	<li>Reclaim creativity and focus despite the chaos around you</li>
 	<li>Bring thoughtfulness into designing your next work norms</li>
 	<li>Tame the beast of email and escape the mire of meetings</li>
 	<li>Find your precious minute to think</li>
</ul>
You’re not alone in your yearning for freedom from constant reactivity. The global workforce today is so fried that it belongs in the food court of a county fair. We’re relentlessly behind the curve, dousing fires everywhere, and our 3 a.m. insomnia provides the only unscheduled thinking time of the day.

What we need reinserted in our lives is the missing element of white space—short periods of open, unscheduled time that, when recaptured, change the very nature of work. White space is the stepping back, the strategic pause, the oxygen that allows the sparks of our efforts to catch fire. White space has the power to radically—and simply—reinvent the way we approach work in this maxed-out, post-COVID 21st-century world.

With Juliet’s memorable stories, easy-to-use tools, and razor-sharp instruction, she carves for us an escape route from the overwhelming amount of low-value tasks and the daily avalanche of e-mails, meetings, decks, and reports. Using research, client stories, and a relatable voice, Juliet shows all of us how to reclaim time for thinking and make room for what truly matters. Whether you are an individual trying to build a more sane and humane flow of daily work, a team that wants new levels of efficiency and effectiveness, or an entire organization changing your culture toward thoughtfulness, this book will lead you there.

A Minute to Think: Reclaim Creativity, Conquer Busyness, and Do Your Best Work

innovation

julian.malnak

nancy.dome

denis.sternberg

Performance Improvement

time management

productivity

Creativity

Self-Improvement

Mindfulness

Personal Growth

workplace efficiency

Professional Development

stress management

effective work habits

katrina.nordquist

deepa.kartha

What is the purpose of work in your life? You spend one-third of your existence laboring at something, a third of it sleeping, and a third spending time with family or engaged in personal activities. Understanding the meaning you want to derive and the impact you want to make in that working third is incredibly important.

In bringing this book together, <a style="color: #0f1111;" href="https://www.ele.llc/members/michael-grubich" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mike Grubich</a> and <a style="color: #0f1111;" href="https://www.ele.llc/members/mike-milsted" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mike Milsted</a> aim to help you, as we have helped many others, define what’s important to you in your work life, find your True North, and follow your path with intention and conviction. This is what it means to have a career with purpose.

Wherever you are in your career, the sooner you discover and come to terms with what you love doing, the sooner you can take the rudder, bring purpose to what you do for a living, and actively participate in navigating your future.

As our title indicates, this is your field guide to finding the work you love. The stories, tools, and exercises within are designed to unearth your story, help you define what to do for a living, and make it your brand.

We then provide the methods for building a network of inner circle support around you. We give you the strategies to put you in charge of the interview process and lay out how to prepare for and act during negotiations. Finally, we help you onboard with purpose, develop a personal development plan, secure early wins, and become an integral part of your new organization.

Make your next move the best move of your working life. Know your story, build your brand around it, find an organization and culture you can align with, and work at something that adds value to your life.

Career with Purpose: A Guide to Finding the Work You Love

michael.grubich

career path

mike.milsted

shelley.smith

lauren.marder

Career with Purpose

Finding Work You Love

Purpose of Work

True North

Personal Fulfillment

Career Guidance

Meaningful Work

Career Navigation

Personal Brand

Network Building

Interview Strategies

Negotiation Skills

Onboarding with Purpose

Personal Development Plan

Career Success

Work Impact

Career Stories

Career Tools

Career Exercises

Life Purpose

Job Satisfaction

Aligning with Culture

WALL STREET JOURNAL BUSINESS BESTSELLER
AN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF 2O16 PICK IN BUSINESS &amp; LEADERSHIP
Master one of our economy’s most rare skills and achieve groundbreaking results with this “exciting” book (Daniel H. Pink) from an “exceptional” author (New York TimesBook Review).
In our distracted modern economy, the coveted skill of deep work—the ability to focus intensely without interruption on demanding mental tasks—has never been rarer or more valuable. As Cal Newport argues in Deep Work, this superpower boosts your career success and provides meaning, yet most squander it by endlessly checking email and social media.
<blockquote>💥 The key for Deep Work
(Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)
is training your mind and habits.
<ol>
 	<li>Work Deeply</li>
 	<li>Embrace Boredom</li>
 	<li>Quit Social Media</li>
 	<li>Drain the Shallows</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
Newport makes the compelling case that cultivating deep work enhances your impact. He offers a practical four-part regimen for training your mind: work with laser-like focus free of distractions; embrace boredom instead of constant entertainment; quit social media; and avoid shallow obligations that don't engage your talents. Newport supports this advice with stories of legends like Carl Jung who structured their lives around deep work.
Deep Work provides an urgent roadmap for focus amid the digital discord. In our multitasking world where everyone is distracted, deep work is the key to standing out as an achiever. This skill allows you to quickly master the most difficult information and produce your best work. Deep Work gives you a competitive edge.

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

leadership

dirk.tussing

tracey.wik

chris.edwards

marti.konstant

effectiveness

motivation

performance

Focus

Concentration

Digital Distraction

Career

Success

Goal Setting

Technology

Harvard Business Review Magazine Spring 2024 How To Lead When Everyone's Exhausted

Relieve the pressure, recharge, and get the right work done.

Harvard Business Review Magazine Spring 2024 How To Lead When Everyone'S Exhausted

edward.desrosiers

employee engagement

Burnout Prevention

workplace wellness

susan.c.guest

Is your organization strategically prepared for the digital and distributed workplace?

Technology, data analytics and artificial intelligence already impact how people work and engage with organizations. A dispersed workforce, greater transparency, social change, generational shift and value chain disruptions are driving new behaviors and expectations from the workplace. Together, these trends are shaping a new era of distributed and digitally enabled network of workers where the work comes to workers instead of the workers going to work.

In Humans at Work, employee and workplace experience experts Anna Tavis and Stela Lupushor advocate for the adoption of human-centric practices as a critical and necessary part of adapting work and workplaces to the future of work. Outlining the four factors (digitization of work, distributed workplaces, organizational redesign and changing workforce) driving the dramatic changes in the workplace, each chapter provides examples of how innovative companies are building workplace infrastructure and reshaping norms, serving new markets and adopting new technologies.

Filled with examples from both start-ups and established companies, Humans at Work is the workplace leader's guide to building a workplace that creates market value by making work more human.

Humans at Work: The Art and Practice of Creating the Hybrid Workplace

future of work

Future of Work

digital transformation

hybrid workplace

megan.bickle

workplace innovation

remote work

workplace strategy

employee wellbeing

I found this a very "digestable" way to understand how we get in our own way as humans and as leaders. It contains straight forward tips for getting out to be your best self. It condenses so much science into simple, usable concepts. Great for coaching.

Positive Intelligence by Shirzad Chamine introduces the concept of PQ—your Positive Intelligence Quotient—which measures the percentage of time your mind serves you rather than sabotages you. Drawing from neuroscience, psychology, and executive coaching, Chamine identifies ten internal Saboteurs (like the Judge, Controller, and Pleaser) that undermine performance and well-being, and contrasts them with five Sage powers that foster empathy, creativity, and clarity. Through practical tools and mental fitness exercises, the book guides readers to weaken their Saboteurs and strengthen their Sage, ultimately unlocking greater happiness, resilience, and professional success

&nbsp;

New York Times Bestseller! In his popular Stanford University lectures, Shirzad Chamine reveals how to achieve one's true potential for both professional success and personal fulfillment. His groundbreaking research exposes ten well-disguised mental Saboteurs. 

Nearly 95 percent of the executives in his Stanford lectures conclude that these Saboteurs cause "significant harm" to achieving their full potential. With Positive Intelligence, you can learn the secret to defeating these internal foes. 

Positive Intelligence (PQ) measures the percentage of time your mind is serving you as opposed to sabotaging you. While your IQ and EQ (emotional intelligence) contribute to your maximum potential, it is your PQ that determines how much of that potential you actually achieve.  The great news is that you can improve your PQ significantly in as little as 21 days. With higher PQ, teams and professionals ranging from leaders to salespeople perform 30-35 percent better on average. Importantly, they also report being far happier and less stressed.   

The breakthrough tools and techniques in this book have been refined over years of coaching hundreds of CEOs and their executive teams. Shirzad tells many of their remarkable stories, showing you how you too can take concrete steps to unleash the vast, untapped powers of your mind.

DISCOVER HOW TO: 
<ul>
 	<li>Identify and conquer your top mental Saboteurs. Common Saboteurs include the Judge, Controller, Victim, Avoider, and Pleaser. </li>
 	<li>Measure the Positive Intelligence score (PQ) for yourself or your team--see how close you come to the critical tipping point required for peak performance.</li>
 	<li>Increase PQ dramatically in as little as 21 days.</li>
 	<li>Develop new brain "muscles," and access 5 untapped powers with energizing mental "power games."</li>
 	<li>Apply PQ tools and techniques to increase both performance and fulfillment. </li>
</ul>
Applications include team building, mastering workload, working with "difficult" people, improving work/life balance, reducing stress, and selling and persuading.

Positive Intelligence

jane.shlaes

team-building

heather.tunison

leadership development

neurodiversity

professional success

mental Saboteurs

executive coaching

peak performance

PQ score

brain training

stress reduction

sales techniques

From the New York Times bestselling author of Digital Minimalism and Deep Work, a groundbreaking philosophy for pursuing meaningful accomplishment while avoiding overload
<blockquote>~ Do Fewer Things. Work at a Natural Pace. Obsess over Quality. ~</blockquote>
Our current definition of “productivity” is broken. It pushes us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly lengthy task lists and ceaseless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by all we have to do and on the edge of burnout, left to decide between giving into soul-sapping hustle culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are these really our only choices?

&nbsp;

Long before pinging inboxes and clogged schedules arrived, history’s most creative and impactful philosophers, scientists, artists, and writers mastered the art of producing valuable work with staying power. In this timely and provocative book, Cal Newport harnesses the wisdom of these traditional knowledge workers to transform our modern jobs radically. Drawing from deep research on the habits and mindsets of a varied cast of storied thinkers – from Galileo and Isaac Newton to Jane Austen and Georgia O’Keefe – Newport lays out the fundamental principles of “slow productivity,” a more sustainable alternative to the aimless overwhelm that defines our current moment. Combining cultural criticism with systematic pragmatism, Newport deconstructs the absurdities inherent in standard notions of productivity and then provides step-by-step advice for cultivating a slower, more humane alternative.

&nbsp;

From the aggressive rethinking of workload management to introducing seasonal variation to shifting your performance toward long-term quality, Slow Productivity provides a roadmap for escaping overload and arriving instead at a more timeless approach to pursuing meaningful accomplishment. The world of work is due for a new revolution. Slow productivity is precisely what we need.

Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout

Coaching

Slow Productivity

Mindful Work

Productivity Myths

Historical Wisdom

Meaningful Accomplishment

Sustainable Productivity

Cultural Criticism

Task Management

Creative Work

Philosophical Approaches

Pragmatic Solutions

World-renowned biohacker and bestselling author Dave Asprey reveals how to maximize your well-being with the minimum effort, by taking control of your body’s operating system

If you want to lose weight, boost your energy, or sharpen your mind, there are shelves of books offering myriad styles of advice. If you want to build up your strength and cardio fitness, there are plenty of gyms and trainers ready to offer you their guidance. What all of these resources have in common is they offer you a bad deal: a lot of effort for a little payoff. Dave Asprey has found a better way.

In Smarter Not Harder, the proven master of biohacking exposes the surprising secrets of your body’s operating system, or its “MeatOS.” That system is naturally designed to be lazy, which is why sweaty exercise routines and rigid diets produce such limited effects. Dave shows us how to hack the MeatOS and make it do what we want it to do, turning it from obstacle into ally. The key to achieving optimum wellness, he reveals, isn’t about doing more, it’s about doing less—exercising and eating smarter, not harder, and making the body’s built in laziness work for you.

Smarter Not Harder is not a diet nor a fitness plan. It is a system of targeted biohacks aimed at upgrading your metabolic, neurological, and epigenetic systems. Packed with practical, accessible information on better eating; smart workouts that give you more strength and energy in less time; and strategic therapies to reduce stress and boost resilience—Smarter Not Harder will show you how to achieve lasting health in less time.

Smarter Not Harder: The Biohacker's Guide to Getting the Body and Mind You Want

resilience building

Talent Optimization

laura.sandera

Productivity Hacks

Energy Optimization

Mental Performance

Cognitive Enhancement

Biohacking for Business

High-Performance Habits

Health and Productivity

Well-being Strategies

One of the most inspiring and impactful books ever written, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has captivated readers for nearly three decades. It has transformed the lives of presidents and CEOs, educators and parents -- millions of people of all ages and occupations. Now, this 30th Anniversary Edition of the timeless classic commemorates the wisdom of the 7 Habits with modern additions from Sean Covey.

The 7 Habits have become famous and are integrated into everyday thinking by millions and millions of people. Why? Because they work!

With Sean Covey's added takeaways on how the habits can be used in our modern age, the wisdom of the 7 Habits will be refreshed for a new generation of leaders.

They include:

Habit 1: Be Proactive
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Habit 3: Put First Things First
Habit 4: Think Win/Win
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
Habit 6: Synergize
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

This beloved classic presents a principle-centered approach for solving both personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and practical anecdotes, Stephen R. Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, honesty, and human dignity -- principles that give us the security to adapt to change and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

keri.kersten

problem solving

decision making

Effective Communication

Leadership Skills

Habit Formation

Mindset Transformation

Character Development

anthony.candelario

terresa.bubbers

catherine.hebel

Start waking up to your full potential every single day with the updated and expanded edition of the groundbreaking book with more than 2 million copies sold.

Getting everything you want out of life isn’t about doing more. It’s about becoming more. Hal Elrod and The Miracle Morning have helped millions of people become the person they need to be to create the life they’ve always wanted. Now, it’s your turn.

Hal’s revolutionary S.A.V.E.R.S. method is a simple, effective step-by-step process to transform your life in as little as six minutes per day:
<ul class="a-unordered-list a-vertical">
 	<li>Silence: Reduce stress and improve mental clarity by beginning each day with peaceful, purposeful quiet</li>
 	<li>Affirmations: Reprogram your mind to overcome any fears or beliefs that are limiting your potential or causing you to suffer</li>
 	<li>Visualization: Experience the power of mentally rehearsing yourself showing up at your best each day</li>
 	<li>Exercise: Boost your mental and physical energy in as little as 60 seconds</li>
 	<li>Reading: Acquire knowledge and expand your abilities by learning from experts</li>
 	<li>Scribing: Keep a journal to deepen gratitude, gain insights, track progress, and increase your productivity by getting clear on your top priorities</li>
</ul>

The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM)

Positive Psychology

Productivity Habits

Mindfulness in the Workplace

High-Performance Teams

Time Management Strategies

For years, companies have been implementing programs that promote social responsibility and improve employee health, both of which benefit the financial bottom line. Now it’s time to focus on positive social interactions and relationships in the workplace. Why? Research shows that authentic, trust-based relationships increase job satisfaction, engagement, productivity, and retention―and even decreased healthcare costs.

In Work Better Together, two experts from Deloitte explain how working remotely, over-relying on digital communication, and always being “on” is fast-increasing feelings of isolation and burnout―and how a work culture driven by quality relationships can reverse these trends. The authors show how to cultivate positive relationships by:
<ul class="a-unordered-list a-vertical">
 	<li>Focusing on self-care, such as physical health, quality sleep, and taking time off</li>
 	<li>Tapping into human skills, such as empathy, authenticity, and communication</li>
 	<li>Using technology with intentionality to strengthen relationships, while breaking the negative habits technology fosters</li>
 	<li>Managing workplace relationships, whether you’re in the office every day or telecommuting―or something in between</li>
 	<li>Developing a culture of strong relationships that drive quality collaboration throughout the organization</li>
</ul>
Work Better Together walks you through the process of implementing change and fueling a much-needed corporate movement towards humanity in the workplace. Based on the authors’ 40+ combined years of experience, it helps you meet today’s employees’ most urgent needs, while benefitting your organization in real and measurable ways.

Work Better Together: How to Cultivate Strong Relationships to Maximize Well-Being and Boost Bottom Lines

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